PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS
OF MASS DESTRUCTION
AND US NUCLEAR STRATEGY

The British American Security Information Council (BASIC) is an independent
research organization that analyzes international security issues. BASIC
works to promote public awareness of defense, disarmament, military strategy,
and nuclear policies in order to foster informed debate on these issues.
BASIC facilitates the exchange of information and analysis on both sides
of the Atlantic.

NUCLEAR FUTURES:

Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and US Nuclear Strategy

This report was written by Hans M. Kristensen.

This is the second of a series of BASIC Research Reports looking at the future
of Nuclear Weapons Policy. The third Nuclear Futures report by Nicola Butler
and Stephen Young, for publication later this year, will examine options
for initiatives by European states and institutions towards the goal of the
elimination of nuclear weapons.

Published by the British American Security Information Council
March 1998

ISBN: 1 874533 31 8

British Library cataloguing-in-publication data: a catalogue record for this
book is available from the British Library.

Price: £7.00 / $10.00

About the author: Hans M. Kristensen is an independent military and
foreign affairs analyst. He resides in San Francisco, is a member of the
Danish Defense Commission and a technical consultant to Western States Legal
Foundation. Recent publications by the author on the subject of this paper
include: Dangerous Posture, Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, March-April 1998 (forthcoming); and Targets of
Opportunity, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October
1997.

In November 1997, President Clinton issued a highly classified Presidential
Decision Directive

(PDD), giving new guidelines to the military on targeting nuclear weapons.
According to reports, the new PDD allows for the use of nuclear weapons against
rogue states  those suspected of having access to weapons
of mass destruction.

The use of nuclear weapons to deter attack by weapons of mass destruction,
other than nuclear weapons, remains controversial.
General Lee Butler, former
Commander-in-Chief of US Strategic Command, now describes using nuclear weapons
as a solution to chemical or biological attack as an out-moded idea.
Conventional retaliation would be far more proportionate, less damaging to
neighboring states and less horrific for innocent civilians, he says.
There are no rogue nations, only rogue leaders.

In 1995, President Clinton issued a negative security assurance,
pledging that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against
non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). However, the current US nuclear posture conflicts with that pledge.

Non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT have long demanded legally binding
negative security assurances, guaranteeing that nuclear weapons
will not be used against them. The issue is on the agenda for the 1998 NPT
Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva in April 1998.

However, Special Assistant to the President Robert Bell has already stated
that negative security assurances will not tie the hands of US decision-makers
faced with a chemical or biological attack. Its not difficult
to define a scenario in which a rogue state would use chemical weapons or
biological weapons and not be afforded protection under our negative security
assurance, he noted.

Documents obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act also reveal
criticism of the negative security assurance from within the US military.
These documents show how US planning for the use of nuclear weapons against
Third World proliferators has developed in the 1990s. The concept of targeting
Third World proliferators is relatively new to US nuclear doctrine. However,
since the end of the Cold War the US military has seen increasingly
capable Third World threats as a new justification for maintaining
US strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons.

The extensive focus on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has resulted
in fewer but more widespread targets for the remaining US nuclear
weapons. The US nuclear arsenal is in the middle of a multi-billion dollar
upgrade that will make it capable of quickly shifting between a greater number
of limited contingencies all over the world.

Additionally, new modifications of a number of US nuclear weapons are currently
underway in order to provide new capabilities suitable for targeting potential
proliferators. In 1996, the B61-11
modification was identified by the Department of Defense as the weapon
of choice for targeting Libyas alleged underground chemical weapons
plant at Tarhunah. Other weapons modifications are in the pipeline.

However, given the overwhelming US conventional capability, there is no need
to draw up plans for nuclear war in the Third World. Using nuclear weapons
to deter states armed with other weapons of mass destruction is
counterproductive, undermining the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

By using nuclear weapons in this way, the United States is sending a message
that nuclear weapons are important for achieving prestige in world affairs
and for accomplishing military and political objectives. Pointing nuclear
weapons at regional troublemakers will provide them with a justification
to acquire nuclear weapons themselves. Encouraging nuclear proliferation
can only increase the risk to US security in the long term.

A reaffirmation of the commitments to non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament
by removing chemical, biological, and radiological weapons and facilities
from US war planning would be a more fitting post-Cold War measure.

Nevertheless, as the documents researched as the basis for this paper
demonstrate, planning for nuclear war in the Third World has progressed virtually
unopposed.

5

With little informed opposition and public debate, the result is a nuclear
doctrine that borrows heavily from Cold War nuclear thinking. President
Clintons Decision Directive of November 1997 permits this planning
to continue.

In November 1997, President Clinton issued new guidelines to the US military
on targeting of nuclear weapons. According to The Washington Post,
highly classified Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 60 contains
language that would permit US nuclear strikes after enemy attacks using chemical
or biological weapons. Rogue states, a terminology commonly
used by the Pentagon for countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea
and Syria, are specifically listed as possible targets in the event of regional
conflicts or crises.1

The new directive replaces guidelines last issued under President Reagan
nearly 17 years ago. But according to Special Assistant to the President
Robert Bell, the three basic situations in which the United States might
use nuclear weapons have not been changed by the new
PDD.2 They are: if the attacking country has
nuclear weapons; if the aggressor is not in compliance with the international
treaty to curb the spread of nuclear weapons; or if it is allied to a nuclear
power in its attack on the United States. However, Special Assistant Bell
also states that the PDD reflects the current reality, in which an attacker
using weapons of mass destruction could face nuclear
reprisal.3 US declaratory policy on this point
remains ambiguous because the term weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) refers not only to nuclear weapons but also to chemical, biological,
and radiological weapons, as well as the means to deliver them.

The use of nuclear weapons to deter WMD other than nuclear weapons remains
controversial. General Lee Butler, former Commander-in-Chief of US Strategic
Command (STRATCOM) 1992-94 and Commander-in-Chief of US Strategic Air Command
(SAC) 1991-92, who played a key role in shaping US nuclear posture after
the Cold War, now describes using nuclear weapons as a solution to chemical
or biological attack as an outmoded idea. Conventional retaliation
would be far more proportionate, less damaging to neighboring states and
less horrific for innocent civilians, he says. There are no rogue nations,
only rogue leaders.4

In addition, non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) have long demanded legally binding negative security
assurances, guaranteeing that nuclear weapons will not be used against
them. The issue is on the agenda for the 1998 NPT Preparatory Committee meeting
in Geneva in April 1998. Special Assistant Bell has already stated that negative
security assurances will not tie the hands of US decision-makers faced with
a chemical or biological attack. Its not difficult to define
a scenario in which a rogue state would use chemical weapons or biological
weapons and not be afforded protection under our negative security
assurance.5

In 1995, in the run-up to the NPT Conference, the United States, along with
the United Kingdom, France and Russia, reaffirmed its negative security assurance
not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the
Treaty. However, the ink was barely dry on President Clintons pledge
before the Pentagon updated a plan to do just that.

Previously classified documents obtained through the US Freedom of Information
Act reveal the background to the latest PDD. These documents reveal that
not only did President Clintons 1995 pledge fail to change US nuclear
doctrine, but that US military planners have continued to plan for nuclear
war in the Third World ever since.

While the end of the Cold War resulted in a significant cutback in the nuclear
target base and the number of nuclear weapons, the extensive focus on
proliferation of WMD has resulted in a geographical expansion of the potential
targets for remaining US nuclear weapons. In order to be capable of taking
on the broader target list, the US nuclear arsenal is in the middle of a
multi-billion dollar upgrade that will make it capable of quickly shifting
between a greater number of limited contingencies all around the world. The
changes represent as significant a development  although very different
 in nuclear doctrine and war-fighting capability as the shift in the
early 1960s from Mutually Assured Destruction to Flexible Response.

7

The plan to use nuclear weapons against proliferators of WMD creates a
fundamental disharmony in US post-Cold War nuclear policy. In order to strengthen
the NPT regime, non-nuclear-weapon state signatories are promised that they
will not be targeted. Yet in order to fight proliferators, the Pentagon is
planning to do so nonetheless.

Beyond the issue of disharmony, proliferation is becoming an increasingly
prominent driver in nuclear war planning. The large residual nuclear arsenal
in Russia is still the focus  by virtue of sheer numbers  but
the ability also to deter potential proliferators armed with nuclear, chemical,
biological and radiological weapons has reshaped declaratory nuclear policy
and continues to change US nuclear posture. The development threatens to
grant nuclear weapons an enduring role in the post-Cold War era, undercut
deep reductions and to thwart the goal of nuclear disarmament.

Similar, but more limited, developments are underway in other nuclear-weapon
states as well as within NATO. NATO is embracing US doctrine by expanding
alliance nuclear strategy to include the use of British Trident submarines
and US free-fall bombs deployed in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, The
Netherlands, and Turkey against WMD attacks by rogue states. The focus of
this paper, however, is some of the changes that have taken place in US nuclear
planning during the 1990s.

The pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states parties
to the NPT was an important US foreign policy instrument in ensuring
international support for the indefinite extension of the Treaty in 1995.
It was repeated by all the five declared nuclear-weapon states in joint United
Nations Security Council resolution 984 (1995), which was adopted unanimously
on 11 April 1995. The pledge was also listed in the NPT Conferences
decision on Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation
and Disarmament.6

Yet only a few months later, in December 1995, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff
(JCS) completed a review of their Doctrine for Joint Nuclear
Operations (Joint Pub 3-12) which endorsed planning for use of nuclear
weapons against targets in countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North
Korea. An early version of this doctrine had emerged in April 1993. It was
the product of a major refurbishing of US nuclear war planning which included
expansion of targeting from the former Soviet Union and China to include
regional troublemakers around the world armed with WMD. Disclosure of the
document caused a scandal, and criticism forced the Pentagon to downplay
Third World targeting in public since it risked undercutting White House
efforts to rally international support for indefinite extension of the NPT.

The problem was obvious: the development represented a horizontal and vertical
expansion of US nuclear targeting, which was at odds with the vow the United
States had made to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and pursue
complete nuclear disarmament. Moreover, several of the non-nuclear countries
at the negotiating table were becoming targets themselves, in blunt conflict
with President Clintons pledge not to use nuclear weapons against
non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT.

President Clintons pledge, known as a negative security assurance,
was a reaffirmation of a policy first initiated under the Carter Administration
in June 1978. It states:

The United States reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against
non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack
on the United States, its territories, its armed forces or other troops,
its allies, or on a State towards which it has a security commitment, carried
out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapon State in association or alliance
with a nuclear-weapon state.7

How could the United States promise not to use nuclear weapons against
non-nuclear-weapon states parties to the NPT such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and
North Korea, and then approve a doctrine which condoned using nuclear weapons
to deter the use of chemical or biological by the very same states?

8

When confronted with the new evidence a few weeks prior to the start of the
extension conference, the head of the US NPT delegation, Ambassador Thomas
Graham, took cover behind the US-Russian bilateral agreement no longer to
store designated target data in the guidance system of strategic nuclear
missiles. As of May 31, 1994, no country is targeted by the strategic
forces of the United States, Graham told a United Nations press conference
in New York.8 Removing target data from the missiles,
however, does not prevent a country from being a target of nuclear planning.
In any case, Grahams argument was trivial because target data can be
re-loaded into the missiles computers within minutes.

But the US Administration was painfully aware of the importance many non-nuclear
parties to the NPT attach to negative security assurances. It had no intention
of confirming that some of them were becoming nuclear targets. I therefore
am deeply concerned about this type of undue criticism of the United States
prior to the Conference, US Assistant Secretary of Defense, Ashton
B. Carter, wrote a few days before the delegates met in New York, which
only can diminish the chances for a successful outcome. 9 Nuclear doctrine
or not, I want to strongly emphasize, US Deputy Assistant Secretary
for Counterproliferation Policy Mitchell B. Wallerstein echoed in October
1995 in an interview with Air Force Magazine, that
counterproliferation is fundamentally about finding nonnuclear solutions
to these problems... The United States is not looking to retarget our nuclear
weapons.10

Even as these words were being spoken, the planners at the JCS were putting
the final touches to the updated nuclear doctrine. Despite the strong denials,
the doctrine condoned the expansion of US nuclear targeting to non-nuclear
countries. President Clintons 1995 pledge forced no change in nuclear
planning; the updated doctrine is virtually identical to the 1993 version.

The concept of targeting Third World proliferators is relatively new to US
nuclear doctrine, although the United States did target some Third World
countries as a matter of course as early as the late 1980s. However, this
was done as part of its global plan against the Soviet Union and its potential
allies, and as insurance against the possibility of a third country trying
to take advantage of the depletion of US and Soviet arsenals during a major
nuclear war.11 Now, however, some Third World
countries are being independently targeted, as proliferators of weapons of
mass destruction.

References in nuclear strategy to WMD were rare prior to the 1990s and
proliferation as such was not a rationale for US nuclear doctrine. For example,
in spring 1989, 150 people from government, military services, academia,
industry, and the Department of Energy laboratories met at the Los Alamos
Center for National Security Studies to review the past and future of nuclear
weapons. A report from the meeting (which was chaired by, among others, President
Bushs National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft) observed that several
participants had suggested that, if hostile regional states acquire nuclear,
chemical, or biological weapons, the United States may need to revise
its nuclear doctrine and forces specifically to deal with issues raised by
such proliferation.12

With the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the demise of the Warsaw Pact,
however, all that changed. Then Commander-in-Chief SAC, General Butler, told
an audience at the Air Power History Symposium in September 1992 that, as
early as October 1989 [before the Soviet Union had broken up] we abandoned
global war with the Soviet Union as the principle planning and programming
paradigm for the US armed forces. The result was a complete revisit
of nuclear weapons policy and the SIOP [Single Integrated Operational Plan]
target base which resulted in the number of targets in the SIOP, the
chief US nuclear war plan, being reduced from 10,000 to eventually around
2,000.13 The nuclear forces of the former
evil empire were still of concern, but nuclear war planners saw
that a new series of threats had begun to emerge on the horizon,
and began to shift their attention toward potential targets outside Russia
and China. The post-Cold War target base would consist of fewer but
more widespread targets.14

9

When the JCS published the Military Net Assessment in March 1990, the shift
was already evident. The report pointed to increasingly capable Third
World threats as a new justification for maintaining US strategic and
non-strategic nuclear weapons.15 Three months
later, in June 1990, as non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries were formally removed
from the SIOP, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney testified before the Senate
Appropriations Committee making the first high-level reference to WMD as
a formal rationale for keeping US nuclear
weapons.16 These statements were small but important
early indications of a change in US nuclear thinking.

The Gulf War and the disclosure of Iraqs clandestine nuclear weapons
program accelerated the changes in US nuclear doctrine. In January 1991,
as US forces were deployed to liberate Kuwait, Defense Secretary Cheney issued
the top-secret Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy (NUWEP), which formally
tasked the military to plan for nuclear operations against nations capable
of developing WMD.17 This guidance resulted
in SIOP-93, the first overall nuclear war plan formally to incorporate Third
World WMD targets.18

Nothing was said in public about these important additions to the SIOP, but
a couple of hints were given. In March 1991, the JCS suggested in the Joint
Military Net Assessment that non-strategic nuclear weapons could assume
a broader role globally in response to the proliferation of nuclear capability
among Third World nations. The report reiterated, however, that nuclear
proliferation in general necessitated an upgrade of the command, control,
and communication capabilities of US forces, and identified the MILSTAR satellite
communications system, designed to provide secure global command and control
capabilities for nuclear war fighting, as an example of such an
upgrade.19

Likewise, in February 1992, Secretary Cheney stated in the Defense
Departments annual report, the possibility that Third World nations
may acquire nuclear capabilities has led the Department to make adjustments
to nuclear and strategic defense forces and to the policies that guide
them. US nuclear strategy, Cheney said, must now also encompass
potential instabilities that could arise when states or leaders perceive
they have little to lose from employing weapons of mass
destruction.20

When SAC Commander General Butler testified before Congress in April 1992,
he explained the role of nuclear weapons in missions against rogue
nations. A US nuclear deterrent force encourages non-proliferation,
albeit within limits bounded by rational calculations, Butler said,
and added, Some contend that deterrence is not applicable outside the
classic Cold War paradigm  especially when such weapons are in the
hands of seemingly irrational leaders. In my view, the very fact that such
leaders pursue nuclear capability implies a certain lethal
rationality.21

Later the same month, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force John J. Welch
told Congress that the emphasis of the deterrence equation has been
shifted from just deterring the development or use of nuclear weapons by
the Soviet Union, to deterring the development or use of nuclear weapons
by other countries, as well.22

These changes were being incorporated into SIOP-93, but President Bushs
unilateral disarmament initiatives from September 1991 had removed US strategic
bombers and Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from
alert. The move, which was accompanied by a decision to withdraw all tactical
nuclear weapons from surface ships and attack submarines, and drastically
reduce the weapons deployed in Europe, together with Soviet reciprocal steps,
forced new changes in the SIOP. The changes were reflected in the JCSs
new Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP) from 1992 that laid out the
military objectives for the nuclear war plan. However, the plan also directed
military planners to re-target US nuclear weapons beyond Russia and China
to other countries developing weapons of mass
destruction.23

The nuclear cuts on both sides, combined with the new WMD mission, resulted
in a rewriting of Annex C to the JSCP, which contains the targeting and damage
criteria for the use of nuclear weapons. SIOP-93 was scheduled for completion
in October

However, even before SIOP-93 was implemented, Presidents Bush and Yeltsin
agreed to new cuts in the arsenals. The deal was sealed at the Washington
Summit Agreement in June 1992, which resulted in an updated NUWEP 92 and
yet another rewriting of the JSCP Annex C, completed in the spring of
1993.25 Along with additional guidance, this
work resulted in a new nuclear war plan, the SIOP-94, in spring 1993.

Shortly before SIOP-94 was implemented, General Butler, the first Commander
of STRATCOM when it replaced SAC, told The New York Times, our
focus now is not just the former Soviet Union but any potentially hostile
country that has or is seeking weapons of mass
destruction.26 Butler set up a new Joint
Intelligence Center to assess from STRATCOMs operational perspective
the growing threat represented by the global proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction.27 Implementation of
SIOP-94 coincided with the JCS publishing of the first version of the Joint
Nuclear Doctrine (3-12) in April 1993.

STRATCOM had already realized that US nuclear forces were ill-suited for
nuclear war in Third World. Incorporating the Third World into the nuclear
war plan was not just a matter of re-targeting the weapons. The Cold War
focus on the Soviet Union and China meant that hardware and software had
typically been configured for the Northern Hemisphere only. Key
target data processing technologies currently have no capability south
of the equator, a STRATCOM study had already concluded in March 1992.
The report recommended development of a global capability by
the late 1990s.28 Furthermore, expanding nuclear
deterrence to smaller and more diverse regional WMD contingencies meant that
nuclear planners would be faced with rapidly changing guidance and requirements.
The old war planning system was built to handle updates over a matter of
years, but nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War era demanded changes on
a monthly  sometimes even weekly  basis. The solution was the
creation of a completely new nuclear war planning apparatus based on
adaptive planning, a concept which has since been adopted in
NATO nuclear planning as well.

Adaptive planning refers to the means by which nuclear planners can quickly
execute selected or limited attack options against regions inside and outside
Russia, using weapons otherwise assigned exclusively to the traditional SIOP
plan.29 STRATCOM set up a group of ten people
in December 1992 and tasked them to develop a flexible, globally-focused,
war-planning process known as the Strategic War Planning System (SWPS).
The group, known as the Strategic Planning Study Group, developed what they
called a living SIOP, a real-time nuclear war plan which could
receive virtually instantaneous war fighting commands and upgrades. STRATCOM
Commander General Butler described the new concept in an interview with
Janes Defense Weekly in the spring of 1993:

Adaptive planning challenges the headquarters to formulate plans very quickly
in response to spontaneous threats which are more likely to emerge in a new
international environment unconstrained by the Super Power stand-off... We
can accomplish this task by using generic targets, rather than identifying
specific scenarios and specific enemies, and then crafting a variety of response
options to address these threats. To ensure their completeness, these options
consider the employment of both nuclear and conventional weapons. Thus, by
its very nature, adaptive planning offers unique solutions, tailored to generic
regional dangers involving weapons of mass
destruction.30

The concept was approved in July 1993, the final SWPS report finished in
October 1993, and the Living SIOP was implemented on 1 April 1994, coinciding
with completion of SIOP-95.31 Planning requirements
examined went well beyond the core SIOP to include items like crisis planning
and non-strategic nuclear forces.32 The new
SWPS will achieve initial operations capability in late 1998, and when completed
in 2003,

11

will expand the US capability to incorporate the routine processing of WMD
targets outside Russia in countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North
Korea.33

Until recently, updating the SIOP was a major task, taking 14-18 months to
complete. Even SIOP-94, completed in Spring 1993 after significant reductions
in target numbers following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the demise
of the Warsaw Pact, took nearly 17 months.34
The living SIOP, by contrast, is based on continuous analysis
of guidance, forces and target changes, rather than a fixed plan, reducing
the time for complete overhaul of the SIOP to six
months.35 Wholesale revision of an attack plan
for a new enemy will now be possible in
months.36

Regional nuclear contingencies, however, may involve only one or a few dozen
nuclear weapons and not large strategic weapon systems at all. Moreover,
in order to encompass all types of nuclear planning, the modernized SWPS
erases the traditional distinction between strategic and tactical nuclear
planning. Already in 1992, SAC Commander General Butler had emphasized that
he wanted to see a simplified process that makes no distinction between
strategic and tactical mission planning, and one of the requirements
in the new SWPS is that the SIOP process be able to plan for nonstrategic
nuclear force employment.37 The new SWPS will achieve
a preliminary theater support of non-strategic nuclear weapons planning by
January 1998, and the goal is optimized adaptive planning within the
theaters.38 This includes consolidation of theater
and strategic target construction and implementation of the Non-Strategic
Nuclear Force planning capability.39 As a result,
nuclear Tomahawk land-attack missiles assigned to nuclear attack submarines
and dual-capable aircraft, like the F-16 and F-15E the US Air Force currently
deploys in Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, will be incorporated
into STRATCOM nuclear planning, albeit in coordination with the regional
commanders.

The National Academy of Sciences recently recommended that adaptive planning
be used to alleviate the rigidity of the Cold War
SIOP.40 The Academy also recommended that the
US should announce that the only purpose of US nuclear weapons is to deter
attacks on the United States and its allies, adopting no first use for nuclear
weapons as official declaratory
policy.41 However, it is adaptive planning
itself that allows nuclear weapons to take on a broader role against chemical,
biological, and radiological weapons, with nuclear responses of a more limited
nature and weapons that result in less collateral damage. Adaptive planning
grants nuclear deterrence an aura of acceptability, and it is a central element
of the Living SIOP.42

So the race is on for rapid planning capabilities  even faster than
those required to change the overall SIOP plan  to allow planning for
limited nuclear operations, such as those in regional contingencies against
rogue nations, in a much shorter time. Work currently underway
at the Air Forces Rome Laboratory aims to provide planners with the
capability to plan critical nuclear options in the SIOP within
days rather than months and limited SIOP re-planning options in
less than 30 minutes.43

One incentive is that a greater portion of future Russian strategic nuclear
forces will be mobile, as will some Third World WMD targets. Another driver
is that a greater geographical spread of limited target areas in different
regional contingencies, combined with future reductions in the overall number
of nuclear warheads in the arsenal, will increase the need to quickly shift
assignment of a significant number of nuclear warheads from one theater to
the other. Capabilities derived from what was previously called the Survivable
Adaptive Planning Experiment, for example, are aimed at allowing SIOP generation
in less than 24 hours and re-targeting of up to 1000 relocatable targets
per day.44 The result is that in addition to
the core war plan (SIOP), STRATCOM must be prepared to provide a greater
number of smaller, more flexible, adaptive
options.45

At the same time that this expansion of the capabilities and the role of
US nuclear weapons was underway, six working groups were busily undertaking
a major review of US nuclear policy and

12

force structure. Initiated in October 1993, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)
was described as the most ambitious review of US nuclear weapons and nuclear
planning in decades. The six working groups were to
investigate:46

the role of nuclear weapons in US security strategy;

nuclear force structure and infrastructure;

nuclear force operations and Command & Control;

nuclear safety, security, and use control;

the relationship between alternative US nuclear postures and counterproliferation
policy;

the relationship between alternative US nuclear postures and the threat reduction
policy with the former Soviet Union.47

Assistant Secretary Carter was in charge of the NPR process, and at STRATCOM
there were concerns about the negative feelings Carter had
demonstrated in the past toward nuclear weapons. Background information on
Carter indicated a less-than favorable long-term outlook for nuclear
weapons and long-term visions of complete denuclearization.
These were not popular opinions in a command like STRATCOM, whose very existence
relied on nuclear weapons. Persuading such policy makers of a continued need
and wider role for nuclear weapons would be, STRATCOM feared,
an uphill battle.48

Yet, even denuclearizers like Carter did not rock the boat too
much. The opposition to deep cuts and major changes was too great for Carter,
and he soon ran his head against the military establishment. STRATCOMs
position was that the basic role of nuclear weapons in US security
policy had not changed with the end of the Cold War. But after only
four months work, the feeling within STRATCOM was that the process
in which it had put great faith had broken down. General Admire, the
acting co-chairman of the NPR, told Carter that he was concerned with
the process by which the NPR is being conducted. When Carter proposed
that the review should prepare recommendations for the new secretary of
defense-designate, retired Admiral Bobby Inman complained to STRATCOM chief
Admiral Henry G. Chiles, Jnr., that it imposes a schedule that will
backfill the vacuum with grab-bag thinking and then ask the Secretary for
his blessing This would be comical if we didnt have so much at
stake.49

Following the Washington Summit Agreement in June 1992, STRATCOM had conducted
a major force structure analysis to see which forces the US should maintain
after START II. The final report, Sun City, investigated nine
options, six of which were at the 3,500 accountable warhead limit, while
the other three fell well below 3,500
weapons.50 STRATCOM chose a preferred
force and wanted the NPR to accept it, but a few weeks prior to completion
of the NPR, STRATCOM realized that the preferred force was not even among
the eight force structures under consideration within the NPR process. Admiral
Chiles intervened and warned that, all three legs of the Triad are
at risk in the NPR. Without a triad, the US would not be able to maintain
a nuclear posture capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating a resurgent
Russia, while maintaining the flexibility to deal with potential threats
from hostile regional powers.51

When the review was completed in September 1994, well after the first
Living SIOP (SIOP-95) had been implemented, it was apparent that
apart from a few more reductions little had changed. The Pentagon said it
had changed the way it thinks about nuclear weapons and that it was reducing
their role. However, after 55,000 man hours and 11 months of work 
and without a written final report  the NPR essentially implemented
nuclear force structure studies conducted by STRATCOM several years earlier
following President Bushs unilateral initiatives in 1991 and the Washington
Summit Agreement in June 1992. More importantly, the NPR reaffirmed the
importance of nuclear deterrence to US security and supported the continued
existence of a nuclear Triad.

Moreover, STRATCOMs inclusion of regional WMD contingencies into the
nuclear war plan was condoned, although initially somewhat halfheartedly
by the NPR process. During the working group meetings, Carters special
assistant and former

13

professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Steven Fetter, argued repeatedly
that nuclear weapons could only deter nuclear use or acquisition, although
the effect on acquisition was hotly debated. No meaningful
contribution, Fetter argued, was likely in deterring chemical and biological
weapons of mass destruction.52 Eventually, both
Fetter and Carter were outmaneuvered by STRATCOM. Even the suggestion by
the Office of the Secretary of Defense that chemical weapons should be viewed
as a more important threat than biological weapons was strongly opposed by
the military representatives.53

In response to questions asked by the working groups on the role of nuclear
weapons in counterproliferation efforts, however, STRATCOM argued that while
nuclear weapons may not directly affect Third World countries acquisition
of WMD, maintaining nuclear weapons could support political aims. This is
accomplished, STRATCOM explained, through demonstrating intent by
maintaining an arsenal and continuously providing war plans to support regional
CINCs [Commanders-in-Chief]... Within the context of a regional single or
few warhead detonation, classical deterrence already allows for adaptively
planned missions to counter any use of WMD, STRATCOM
elaborated.54 Asked about the US response to
WMD use, STRATCOM answered:

The US should preserve its options for responding to the situation by maintaining
its current policy which does not preclude first use of nuclear weapons.
While it would not be in our interest to unleash the destructive power of
a nuclear weapon, the loss of even one American city, or the endangerment
of vital American interests overseas is unacceptable. To counter this threat,
the US should not rule out the preemptive first use of nuclear weapons. In
addition, following the use of WMD, the US should again seek to preserve
its options. The US policy should not require retaliation with nuclear weapons,
but it should leave that option open as one of a complete spectrum of possible
options.55

Carter, however, was concerned that nuclear deterrence in WMD scenarios could
have negative impact on the NPT regime and instructed the drafting groups
to suggest possible political, economical and conventional deterrence options
that could complement the US nuclear
posture.56

In the end, however, the counterproliferation working group sided with STRATCOM.
Not only did it accept STRATCOMs broad nuclear deterrence vision, but
it warned that deep reductions in US nuclear weapons might influence
proliferators to decide to match US numbers or allies under US protection
to reconsider their alternatives for
defense.57 Indeed, within the counterproliferation
group there was group consensus that [the] full range of nuclear options
is desirable to deter proliferant nations, and the majority wanted
the unique contribution of nuclear deterrence to
counterproliferation to be stated more
forcefully.58

In addition to declaratory policy, the group also agreed that nuclear weapons
remain the only method of destroying certain types of targets including deeply
buried facilities.59 Only on one issue, the
question of terrorist use of WMD, did the group see a limitation: nuclear
deterrence should only apply to state-sponsored terrorism, because non-state
actors would not be deterred by the US nuclear
posture.60

In sum, STRATCOM probably could not have hoped for stronger backing. When
the results were briefed to Congress in September 1994, nuclear weapons featured
prominently in counterproliferation roles such as to deter WMD acquisition
or use. But these conclusions were largely deleted from the public
record, as were several non-strategic nuclear weapons missions in support
of counterproliferation scenarios.61 Instead,
the public conclusion was that the NPR had reduced the role of nuclear weapons.

Once the policy and doctrine were in place, the next step was to plan for
it. STRATCOM was assigned to help regional commands draw up the plans for
nuclear war with regional troublemakers.62 But
as late as December 1994, the overall responsibility for the counterproliferation
mission had not yet been

General Butler wanted to move STRATCOM firmly into the counterproliferation
mission.64 In April 1993, he testified
before Congress that, at the request of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, he was working with selected regional Unified Commands to
explore the transfer of planning responsibilities for employment of nuclear
weapons in theater conflicts. He noted that this initiative could
save manpower and further centralize the planning and control
of US nuclear forces.65

However, planning for nuclear war with the Third World was a new development.
A White Paper from October 1993 describes how STRATCOM already has
a role in countering weapons of mass destruction in the context of deterring
their use by the Former Soviet Union. Nevertheless, planners are now
focusing much of their thinking on developing a concept which can support
both the civilian leadership and theater CINCs in planning for military
counterproliferation options against weapons of mass destruction outside
Russia.66 We also need to have a strategy
to deter the more undeterrable leaders such as Quadaffi and Saddam
Hussein, STRATCOM said.67 One of the results
of this effort was the creation of what were known as the Silver Books.

While there were many separate counterproliferation efforts underway in the
Pentagon, none addressed the full spectrum of WMD targets within the context
of real US military capabilities and limitations. Nor did they deal with
proliferation of WMD as a global problem. With the Silver Books, the
counterproliferation effort would be focused on STRATCOM and it would give
the armed forces a global capability to carry out the Department of Defense
(DOD) counterproliferation policy.68

The Silver Books were plans for military strikes against WMD facilities in
a number of rogue nations, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North
Korea. Silver was an abbreviation of Strategic Installation List of Vulnerability
Effects and Results, and the project involved the planning associated
with a series of silver bullet missions aimed at
counterproliferation.69 Targets included
nuclear, chemical, biological, and command, control and communications
installations.70

In early 1994, the Weapons Subcommittee of STRATCOMs SAG began analyzing
target sets and weapons capabilities against representative Silver Book targets.
The primary analysis centered on defeat mechanisms for chemical/biological
and buried targets. A total of six facilities were analyzed using conventional,
unconventional and nuclear weapons appropriate for the
attack.71 The focus was on fixed
installations.72 By April, the process had advanced
enough that new STRATCOM chief Admiral Chiles could report to Congress that
systems and procedures to accomplish this task have been developed,
and planning coordination with regional commanders has begun. He added,
in a supporting role, STRATCOM will provide its planning expertise
to assist geographic unified commanders when
required.73

By late 1994, a proposed Silver Book was ready for the European Command and
a prototype was being developed for Pacific Command. STRATCOM briefed staff
from the regional commands, and also briefed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General John Shalikashvili.74 STRATCOM
officials argue that STRATCOM deserved a stronger role in the
counterproliferation effort because:

We can kind of bring a global perspective to any counterproliferation strategy,
because the kind of targets youd be looking at are the same kind of
targets we already look at for our strategic purposes, and the same kind
of interactions that youd have with the National Command Authority
for strategic weapons, would probably be very similar to the kind of interaction
youd have in some kind of counterproliferation scenarios.

You ought to think about this kind of problem ahead of time, so you know
what the potential targets are, and you know what kind of force would be
the best to take that out, whether they are special operations forces or
conventional weapons or some kind of nuclear
weapon.75

But reactions were mixed and the regional commands

15

did not approve of STRATCOMs plan to take control. As 1994 drew to
a close, it became increasingly apparent that the counterproliferation mission
would not be formally awarded to STRATCOM.76
Then, in early 1995, the JCS ordered STRATCOM to drop the Silver Books
project.77

Termination of the Silver Books and the subsequent decision by a Defense
Acquisition Board review later in 1995 to develop only non-nuclear weapons
for attacking hard and deeply buried targets appeared to be major setbacks
for advocates of nuclear
counterproliferation.78 But STRATCOM was convinced
that existing nuclear forces were to play a role in countering WMD, and
termination of the Silver Book concept did not mean an end to the targeting
of the Third World, but only that STRATCOM would not have overall authority
for counterproliferation. Nuclear planning would be focused at STRATCOM but
in coordination with the regional commanders and their planning staff. Nor
did the death of the Silver Books project have any effect on the content
of the JCSs updated Joint Nuclear Doctrine from 1995, which is virtually
identical to the previous version from 1993. Regional nuclear war planning
continued under other names.

The expansion in nuclear targeting was probably aided by the US decision
to eliminate its chemical and biological weapons. In the cynical logic of
deterrence, removing those weapons from the arsenal meant that the United
States could no longer rely on a tit-for-tat response to attacks by chemical
and biological weapons to deter rogue nations from using such
weapons.79 Other than the overwhelming conventional
capability, the only big stick left in the US arsenal was the
threat of nuclear weapons.

Yet deterring troublemakers was not necessarily the same as deterring the
Soviet Union. In June 1994, while the NPR was still under preparation, the
SAG produced a white paper on the future of nuclear forces which warned that
the dynamics of deterring regional WMD threats were far from clear. Yet the
paper nonetheless embraced that very role:

Nor should we be quick to embrace the position that nuclear weapons should
exist only to deal with other nuclear weapons. Those who argue that biological
and chemical threats can always be safely deterred without requiring the
last resort of US nuclear forces must bear the burden of proof for their
argument. Until they make a compelling case that nuclear force is not necessary
for successful deterrence, it is not in the nations interest to forswear
the uncertainty as to how we would respond to clear and dangerous threats
of other weapons of mass destruction. Measured ambiguity is still
a powerful tool for the President trying to deter an intransigent
despot.80

Admiral Chiles later commended SAG for the document which was particularly
effective in preparing the Silver Books and the
NPR.81

Throughout 1995 and 1996, SAG continued to define the role of WMD in US nuclear
deterrence. In April 1995, four months after the Silver Books were terminated
and in the same month that the Clinton Administration reiterated its negative
security assurances to non-nuclear-weapon states, the SAG Policy Subcommittee
completed an in-depth review of deterrence against Third World proliferators.
The review provided Terms of Reference other SAG subcommittees could use
as a baseline to expand the concept of Deterrence of the Use of
WMD.82

The review, Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, bluntly
criticized the pledge given by President Clinton not to use nuclear weapons
against non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT. It is easy to
see the difficulty we have caused ourselves, the review said, by
putting forward declaratory policies such as the Negative Security
Assurances which were put forward to encourage nations to sign up for
the Non-proliferation Treaty. The review warned that, if we put
no effort into deterring these [WMD] threats, they will be
undeterrable by
definition.83 Threatening what an adversary
values most is essential, the review stressed, and here is the anecdote it
used to demonstrate it:

The story of the tactic applied by the Soviets during the earliest days of
the Lebanon chaos is a case in point. When three of its citizens and their
driver were kidnapped and killed, two days later the Soviets had delivered
to the leader of the revolutionary activity a package containing a single
testicle  that of his eldest son  with a message that said in
no uncertain terms, never

16

bother our people again. It was successful throughout the period of
the conflicts there. Such an insightful tailoring of what is valued within
a culture, and its weaving into a deterrence message, along with a projection
of the capability that be mustered, is the type of creative thinking that
must go into deciding what to hold at risk in framing deterrent targeting
for multilateral situations in the future.84

The STRATCOM planners quickly cautioned that the story illustrates just how
more difficult it is for a society such as ours to frame its deterrent messages.
Even so, that our society would never condone the taking of such actions
makes it more difficult for us to deter acts of terrorism, the planners
complained.85

The review strongly recommended ambiguity in US nuclear deterrence and used
President Bushs warning to Saddam Hussein in January 1991 against using
chemical weapons as an example of the value of this. But it added another
twist to the equation, warning that in threatening nuclear destruction the
United States must not appear too rational and cool-headed. Indeed, that
some elements may appear potentially out of control can
be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the
minds of an adversarys decision makers. This essential sense of fear,
the review concluded, is the working force of deterrence. That the
US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked
should be part of the national persona we project to all
adversaries.86

In the case of non-Russian adversaries, the review concluded, the penalty
for using WMD should not be just military defeat, but the threat of
even worse consequences. Yet it also warned against too many civilian
casualties. When dealing with WMD conflicts other than Russia that are not
nation-threatening, the US does not require the ultimate
deterrent  that a nations citizens must pay with their
lives for failure to stop their national leaders from undertaking
aggression. It will be sufficient to create fear of national
extinction, the review said, by denying their leaders the ability to
project power thereafter, but without having to inflict massive civilian
casualties.87 This, in essence, is the penalty
the United States sought to inflict upon Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War
 but with non-nuclear means.

After STRATCOM completed its nuclear deterrence review for the post-Cold
War era, it decided to test it on a potential WMD adversary. It chose Iran.
During the fall of 1995 the Policy Subcommittee of SAG conducted an in-depth
application of the weapons of mass destruction deterrence
study.88 The test coincided with a secret war
game held in September 1995 in Washington, D.C., called the Technology
Initiatives Game (TIG95). TIG95 simulated an Iranian attack on its
Gulf neighbors in the year 2015 in which Iran was armed with twenty to thirty
nuclear warheads and intermediate-range ballistic as well as cruise
missiles.89 STRATCOM, however, could not complete
its in-depth study of Iran at the time, so it was deferred pending further
coordination with Central Command. Instead, Admiral Chiles, requested that
the subcommittee apply the deterrence theory to North
Korea.90

The focus was on the regions, and in February 1996 regional nuclear
counterproliferation was formally enshrined into nuclear doctrine when the
JCS published its Doctrine for Joint Theater Nuclear Operations (Joint Pub
3-12.1). This document translates the overall joint nuclear doctrine
from 1995 for use in regional scenarios such as in Europe, the Middle East
and the Korean Peninsula. The emphasis on WMD is striking. Joint Pub 3-12.1
defines that the threat of nuclear exchange by regional powers and
the proliferation of WMD have grown following the end of the Cold War.
Short, medium, and intermediate-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear,
biological, or chemical warheads, the doctrine concludes, are the primary
threat in theaters.91

Nuclear war planning with the Third World, however, soon collided with the
demand for further nuclear reductions beyond the START II treaty. In defining
post-Cold War deterrence, the SAG subcommittee discovered that expanding
the target base globally would be difficult if the number of nuclear weapons
continued to decline. Basically,

17

there would not be enough operational nuclear weapons in the arsenal to cover
Russia and China, as well as half a dozen regional troublemakers. So the
sub-committee conducted a review of the reasons, the pros and cons, of reducing
the number of accountable nuclear warheads below the 3,500 set by START II.
It recommended against deeper cuts partly to maintain enough nuclear weapons
for a broader base to address
WMD.92

Once an addendum to nuclear war planning, targeting WMD proliferators had
become a challenge to the overall force structure. Deeper cuts under a START
III agreement could only be achieved if the overall guidance was changed
allowing for a reduction in the number of Russian targets to be covered by
the war plan.

However, reducing aimpoints within the different target categories was no
longer enough; the number of categories themselves had to be cut. Consequently,
in November 1997, President Clinton signed a new directive ordering the military
no longer to target Russian conventional forces and industry but focus on
destroying nuclear forces as well as the military and civilian leadership.
Fighting  and winning  a protracted nuclear war against Russia
would no longer be an objective. The new PDD replaced a nearly 17-year old
directive signed by President Reagan in 1981 at the height of the Cold
War.93

While reducing the number of targets in Russia, the new Directive caught
up with the expansion of nuclear targeting STRATCOM had already been conducting
for years. It ordered the nuclear planners to broaden the scope of targeting
in China to include conventional forces and industry  the very categories
it eliminated from the Russian target pool. Moreover, the secret directive
is reported to have identified specific regional contingencies (such as Iran,
Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria) where US nuclear forces could be directed
to respond to attacks by WMD in the future.

Adding the Third World to the target pool means upgrading weapon systems.
The Navy is installing a new submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM)
Retargeting System (SRS) that will enable Trident submarines to quickly,
accurately, and reliably retarget missiles to targets and to
allow timely and reliable processing of an increased number of
targets.94 The operational requirement
for the SRS was defined in October 1989 (a month before the fall of the Berlin
Wall). The program is being implemented in three phases, with phase III scheduled
for completion in the 1998-2002 time frame. The end result will help
reduce overall SIOP processing time and support adaptive
planning. Trident submarines at sea will have a greater capability
to attack fixed and mobile sites.95 Although
originally conceived to allow Trident submarines to attack dispersed Soviet
SS-24 rail-mobile and SS-25 road-mobile ICBMs, these technical improvements
also provide new capabilities for dealing with new or mobile targets globally.

Similar developments are underway within the Air Force, which is spending
more than $4 billion on upgrading its Minuteman III ICBMs through 2001. Part
of this upgrade entails equipping the missiles with the Rapid Execution and
Combat Targeting system, which will provide rapid message processing
[and] rapid re-targeting.96 When completed
early next century, the program will upgrade Minuteman to Peacekeeper-class
accuracy to hold at risk the hardest enemy
targets.97

The Air Force is also upgrading its B-2 bombers for nuclear counterproliferation
missions. Conceived as a purely nuclear strike platform against the Soviet
Union, the B-2 is being given an additional conventional capability to justify
maintaining the expensive program and to give the bomber a role in regional
contingencies. Moreover, the B-2, which is being increased from 20 to 21
operational aircraft by upgrading a test plane to a fully operational bomber,
will be a designated carrier of the Pentagons newest nuclear bomb:
the B61-11.98 Because of the B61-11s enhanced
earth-penetrating capabilities and low yield, it is likely to be the weapon
of choice in

The B61-11 program began in October 1993, one month after the Pentagon completed
its Bottom Up Review (BUR). The BUR shifted the US strategic focus from the
former Soviet Union to regional scenarios involving rogue nations
armed with WMD. A request came from the office of the Assistant to the Secretary
of Defense/Atomic Energy, which asked the Air Force to study the replacement
of the aging B53 gravity bomb with a stockpile
weapon.99

However, building nuclear weapons was not popular in the early 1990s. In
1992 and 1993 it was disclosed that the Department of Energy and the nuclear
weapons laboratories were involved in work on designing mini-nukes specifically
tailored for use against rogue nations. Subsequently, Congress
decided in November 1993  one month after the Air Force was asked to
study the new bomb  to ban any research and development which
could lead to the production by the United States of a new low-yield nuclear
weapon, including a precision low-yield nuclear
weapon.100

As a result, the B61-11 project (nicknamed The Duck because it
has identical flight characteristics to the existing B61-7 bomb) was not
submitted to the Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) for approval. The Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy was concerned that
Congress would not support it. However, in September 1994, the NPR recommended
replacement of the old B53 and in November, the Congressional election changed
committee chairmanship to one more favorably inclined to reopening the nuclear
weapons production line. The Assistant Secretary of Defense
re-energized the project with a strong recommendation that the
effort be completed before Congress changed
again.101

These events occurred at the same time that Deputy Secretary of Defense John
Deutch presented the results of the NPR and assured the Congress that
there is no requirement currently for the design of any new warhead
that we can see.102 Deutch added that
almost all nuclear modernization programs had been
terminated.103 Some remained. One of these
was the B61-11.

Once the DOD was convinced that opposition in Congress had eroded, things
moved fast. The project was submitted to the NWC, which approved it in February
1995. Briefings continued in Congress with approval following in July 1995.
In August 1995  less than a year after the Congressional election and
only three months after the United States, together with the other parties
to the NPT, had once more committed to pursue nuclear disarmament 
the B61-11 program formally got
underway.104

Target Sequence and Military Characteristics review for the new bomb was
performed by an Environments Working Group to reflect its unique
requirements, and planning for flight tests by the new bombs
users, Air Combat Command and STRATCOM, got off the
ground.105 There was no time or money in the
existing B-2 flight test program to develop a completely new weapon, so the
B61-11 was developed with identical properties and interfaces to the B61-7,
already certified for the B-52 and B-2 (Block 20) bombers. Consequently,
the B-52 was added to the Air Force test flight program to reduce time and
costs.106 A total of 13 full-scale drop tests
were performed in 1996, three in Alaska and 10 at the Tonopah Test Range
in Nevada.107 The B61-11 passed its certification
flight tests on 20 November 1996. Four complete retrofit kits were delivered
to the Air Force in mid-December 1996. By the end of 1996, the new bomb was
accepted as a limited stockpile item pending additional
tests.108 These were scheduled to include flight
tests through July 1997.109

The B61-11 apparently is not the only modified nuclear weapon in the pipeline.
Under the Department of Energys Core Research and Advanced Technology
Program Element Plans, scientists are busily researching concept design
studies, arising out of the experiences during the Gulf War that indicate
potential military utility for types of nuclear weapons not currently in
the stockpile.110

19

Some of this work is taking place at Sandia National Laboratory where scientists
are examining changes to other B61 designs to add additional value
to these systems for our military customers. One of these efforts is
the Bomb Impact Optimization System program, in which Sandia National Laboratory
is investigating the feasibility of modifying a B61 payload for use
in a guided glide bomb for aircraft delivery against defended target
complexes. These efforts include analysis, design, model fabrication
and testing, and ground and f light testing of a functional
prototype.111

Other exotic design concepts stem from the emphasis on underground and deeply
buried targets and the concern to limit the collateral damage from the use
of nuclear weapons. These are all prime features of the counterproliferation
effort. Research contracts for 1997, outlined by the Defense Special Weapons
Agency (DSWA), formerly the Defense Nuclear Agency, include adjusting
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) data for nuclear weapons to allow war planners
to assess wide-area, distributed target damages inflicted by nuclear
weapons EMP effects. The project aims to lower the burst height
of nuclear weapons EMP by two-thirds from the existing boundary of 100 km
altitude to 30 km, and to revamp the capability to compute air and ground
bursts EMP fields as well as shallow buried bursts. The project will also
investigate alternatives to potential design modification and weapon delivery
with the aim to limit or minimize collateral damage from the
use of nuclear weapons. Models for using EMP to knock out blast and
shock-hardened buried targets will be developed in order to devise
a new tool for PC-based weapon lethality prediction and target damage assessment
[ for use by] USSTRATCOM and other regional commands for their
specific missions applications.112

It is still too early to predict whether these exotic designs will mature
into actual nuclear weapons modifications. But these and a wide range of
other nuclear projects, are clear indicators that US nuclear weapons are
here to stay.113 And the expansion of US nuclear
doctrine is an increasingly prominent justification for new weapons.

Even before the B61-11 was accepted into the stockpile, its first potential
target was already pronounced: Libya. Despite repeated assurances by Assistant
Secretary Carter and Deputy Assistant Secretary Wallerstein that US
counterproliferation efforts do not involve nuclear weapons, other US officials
in 1996 identified Libyas alleged underground chemical weapons plant
at Tarhunah as a potential target for the B61-11.

We could not take [Tarhunah] out of commission using strictly conventional
weapons, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical
and Biological Programs Harold P. Smith, Jr., said in April
1996.114 If there was a decision to destroy
the plant, the B61-11 would be the nuclear weapon of choice,
Smith said.115 The statement was given during
a breakfast interview with reporters after Defense Secretary William Perry
had told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on chemical or biological
weapons that the US retained the option of using nuclear weapons against
the Tarhunah plant.

Like the disclosure of the Silver Books, the remarks about targeting Libya
caused widespread attention and the Pentagon quickly retreated from its nuclear
sabre rattling. There is no consideration to using nuclear weapons,
and any implication that we would use nuclear weapons preemptively against
this plant is just wrong, said Pentagon spokesperson Ken Bacon. Yet
nuclear doctrine prevailed and Bacon had to keep the nuclear option open,
adding that despite his denial, Washington did not rule out using nuclear
weapons in response to a nuclear, chemical and biological attack on the United
States or its allies.116 Targeting or no targeting,
Washington just didnt want to talk about it.

However, the importance of the statement should not be lost; Libya is a party
to both the NPT and the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (ANWFZ) Treaty.
It signed the NPT in 1975 and has entered into nuclear safeguard agreements
with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is therefore a non-nuclear-weapon

20

state party to the NPT and thus falls within the group of nations the United
States has pledged not attack with nuclear weapons. The United States has
also signed protocol I of the ANWFZ, undertaking not to use or threaten
to use a nuclear explosive device against any party to the Treaty.
Libya became a target nonetheless.

Privately, military and civilian officials in the Clinton Administration
argue that planning for nuclear contingencies against non-nuclear NPT countries
such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria is prudent, despite the
apparent conflict with the Negative Security Assurance (NSA). According to
the preamble to the US NSA the United States believes that universal
adherence to and compliance with international conventions and treaties seeking
to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a cornerstone
of global security.117 The United States
interprets this reference to compliance with treaties concerning WMD as allowing
it to opt out of its negative security assurance where a state, such as Libya,
is believed to be manufacturing chemical weapons. Likewise, the US appears
to have a similar interpretation of its commitment under the ANWFZ Treaty.

This interpretation, however, is flawed for several reasons. Negative Security
Assurances are given in connection with the NPT, a treaty that relates to
nuclear weapons. Thus, the issue of compliance must be evaluated in connection
with that treaty. Moreover, the interpretation undermines the value of negative
security assurances as a way of providing reassurance to non-nuclear-weapon
states and as an important US tool to encourage universality of the Treaty
itself.

The incident with Libya also raises the increasingly controversial issue
of first use  whether it is acceptable or prudent for
nuclear-weapon states to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons not just
in retaliation for an attack by WMD, but also in pre-emptive strikes against
facilities suspected of manufacturing WMD.

Planning for nuclear war in the Third World is completely out of tune with
what the United States is otherwise trying to accomplish. It is clear how
the United States itself reacts when nuclear weapons are pointed at it. Why,
then, does the Clinton Administration expect that other countries will act
any differently? Targeting nuclear weapons at regional troublemakers will
provide them with a justification to acquire nuclear weapons. By using nuclear
weapons in this way, the United States is sending a message that nuclear
weapons are important for achieving prestige in world affairs and for
accomplishing military and political objectives. It also indicates that the
nuclear powers have no intention of eliminating their nuclear arsenals, as
required by the NPT.

Equally importantly, there is the question of whether nuclear
counterproliferation has any meaning at all or if it merely results from
the projection of Cold War nuclear thinking onto the post-Cold War era.

During the Cold War both sides claimed to deter each other. Yet both sides
were also self-deterred because they realized that the global destruction
resulting from nuclear war would cost more than either side could win. In
post-Cold War regional contingencies, however, that important constraint
is missing. In a conflict with a rogue state to which even nuclear
destruction equals martyrdom, deterrence may not mean much. The behavior
of leaders of such states may turn out to be far removed from the assumptions
upon which US deterrence theory depends in order to work. A rogue
state might gamble that the United States would never dare to use nuclear
weapons even if a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon was used against
US troops, an allied country, or even a US city. Breaking the nuclear taboo
would be impossible, and the small rogue state could come out
as the small state bullied by the nuclear power.

On the other hand, as US planning against Third World targets continues,
US decision makers may actually come to believe, albeit gradually, that using
nuclear weapons could be safe if collateral damage
was kept to a minimum. Controlled response would take on a new meaning. If
regional nuclear

21

deterrence is to add the credibility that the existing nuclear posture has
not been able to provide, then the new posture and strategy must indicate
more willingness than the old to use nuclear weapons.

Despite such fundamental unanswered questions, US nuclear planners are busy
drawing up plans for nuclear contingencies in regional conflicts against
rogue states. As a result, the scope of nuclear targeting seems
to be set for constant expansion. In the words of the Defense Special Weapons
Agency, the international environment has now evolved from a weapon
rich environment to a target rich
environment.118

In the old days, WMD referred to nuclear weapons, since these were the weapons
that destroyed en masse. But as the Cold War came to an end and Coalition
Forces expelled Iraq from Kuwait in a display of New World Order values,
the discovery of Iraqs advanced clandestine nuclear weapons program
propelled the decade old concern of nuclear weapons proliferation on to a
new level. Iraqs use of chemical-capable Scud missiles against Israel
and Saudi Arabia, combined with allegations of Libyan chemical weapons ambitions
just a few months later, elevated WMD to the status of a new threat to
international security. With the former Soviet threat rapidly fading into
the background, US military planners eagerly grabbed the new enemy
and incorporated it into their nuclear planning.

When the first JCS Joint Nuclear Doctrine was published in 1993, the Terms
of Definitions did not explain what WMD meant. But the text of the document
talks about three types of WMD, whether it be nuclear, biological,
or chemical weapons.119 The updated version
from 1995, however, clearly defines WMD as weapons that are capable
of a higher order of destruction and/or of being used in such a manner as
to destroy large numbers of people. Moreover, in an important addition
to the old definition of WMD the new document adds
radiological weapons to the list, so that WMD now consists of
four types of weapons: nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological
weapons.120

The ramifications of the ever-expanding WMD target terminology are endless.
The most recent implication of adding radiological weapons to the list is
a scenario in which the launch of a missile loaded with nuclear waste into
a city or onto US forward deployed troops could potentially qualify for a
nuclear response. This may be unlikely, but the inclusion of radiological
weapons into the nuclear doctrine is a worrisome additional step in
the pool of post-Cold War nuclear targets.

Where does it end? The post-Cold War trend is that each time a new crude
weapon emerges somewhere on the radar screen, which qualifies on the
Pentagons checklist as a WMD, that weapon may be added to US nuclear
planning as a matter of routine. Clearly the implications deserve more debate
and consideration than they have had to date, for along with inclusion into
the stated nuclear doctrine comes actual nuclear planning. Adding radiological
weapons to the list means that STRATCOM, along with US Regional Commands
in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, is investigating where the targets
are and which US nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles should be designated
to ensure destruction of the new targets in case of war.

At the threshold of the post-Cold War era, less than a decade after the fall
of the Berlin Wall, the proliferation of WMD has risen to the top of the
international agenda. Fortunately, there are many tools to influence and
counter proliferation. But nuclear deterrence, despite its superficially
appealing logic, is not a useful tool. The most effective way of dealing
with proliferation of WMD is to prevent countries from acquiring these weapons
in the first place. Engaging in nuclear war planning against WMD proliferators
is a step backward to old-fashioned Cold War deterrence that will lock the
international community in nuclear antagonism and grant nuclear weapons an
enduring status and utility in international affairs which, in turn, will
undermine non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

22

The benefit of nuclear deterrence in counterproliferation is not as important
as what can be gained by its absence. With the overwhelming US conventional
capability, there is no need to draw up plans for nuclear war with the Third
World. The Cold War vividly demonstrated how difficult it is to stop nuclear
plans from escalating once they are set in motion.

The latest Presidential Decision Directive was drawn up by extremely small
group, led by Special Assistant Bell of the National Security Council and
the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs, Franklin Miller.
There were no review and no panels, and, while the State Department reportedly
was involved, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was not consulted,
an indication of the failure to consider properly the impact on non-proliferation
efforts.121 A reaffirmation of the commitments
to non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament by removing chemical, biological,
and radiological weapons and facilities from US war planning would be a more
fitting post-Cold War measure.

Nevertheless, as the documents researched as the basis for this paper
demonstrate, planning for nuclear war in the Third World has evolved
significantly since the Gulf War. For nuclear planners, the logical conclusion
of proliferation and the US renunciation of chemical and biological weapons
is that nuclear weapons must now take over in deterring the acquisition and
use of WMD. Behind a veil of military secrecy, planning has progressed virtually
unopposed. With little informed opposition and public debate, the result
is a nuclear doctrine that borrows heavily from Cold War nuclear thinking.
President Clintons Decision Directive of November 1997 permits this
planning to continue.

6 US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, A Declaration
by the President on Security Assurances for Non-Nuclear Weapon States Parties
to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, April 5,
1995; Decision: Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation
and Disarmament, NPT/CONF.1995/32/DEC.2, Item 8. Both documents are
available at the ACDA Internet Home Page at
http://www.acda.gov. See also Paul Bedard
and Gus Constantine, US Vows No Nuke Attacks Against Non-Nuclear
Nations, The Washington Times, 6 April 1995, p. A3.

7 US Department of State, Statement by the Honorable
Warren Christopher, Secretary of State, Regarding a Declaration by the President
on Security Assurances for Non-Nuclear Weapon States Parties to the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 5 April 1995.

8 US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Transcript of
Ambassador Thomas Graham, press conference at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty Preparatory Conference at the United Nations, March 1995. Fax received
from ACDA on 6 March 1995.

9 Ashton B. Carter, US Assistant Secretary of Defense, letter
to the author, not dated [received 28 April 1995].

11 Bruce Blair, Towards Zero Alert: Operation Path
to Nuclear Safety, The Brookings Institution, presentation made at
the Panel on Non-Obvious Costs of Nuclear Weapons, as part of the session
on International Security, Proliferation, and Weapons of Mass Destruction,
at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference,
Atlanta, Georgia, 16-21 February 1995.

13 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 June 1992  31 December 1992, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1993, p. 9. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom
of Information Act. For descriptions of SIOP changes in the early 1990s,
see: Richard Halloran, US Revises Its War Plan For New Age, The
New York Times, 2 November 1988, p. A7; Dick Cheney, US Secretary of
Defense, in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Defense
Subcommittee, Hearing on Department of Defense Appropriations For Fiscal
Year 1991, Part 1, National Security, 101st Cong., 2nd sess., 12 June 1990,
p. 340; Patrick E. Tyler, Air Force Reviews Doomsday
Plan, The Washington Post, 11 July 1990, p. A17; R. Jeffrey
Smith, US Expected to Reduce Number of Nuclear Targets, The
Washington Post, 19 April 1991, p. A17; R. Jeffrey Smith, US Trims
List of Targets in Soviet Union, The Washington Post, 21 July
1991, p. A1; George Perkovich, Counting the Costs of the Arms Race,
Foreign Policy, Winter 1991-92, pp. 83-105; William M. Arkin, How
Much Isnt Enough?, Greenpeace International, Draft Paper Prepared
for the Center for Strategic and International Studies Study Nuclear
Weapons After the Cold War, 17 September 1992, pp. 5-7.

14 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 June 1992  31 December 1992, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1993, pp. 13, 66. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom
of Information Act.

Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee, Hearing on Department
of Defense Appropriations For Fiscal Year 1991, Part 1, National Security,
101st Cong., 2nd sess., 12 June 1990, p. 304. Removal of non-Soviet Warsaw
Pact countries from the SIOP is detailed in USSTRATCOM, Strategic Planning
Study, Final Report, 1 October 1993, p. 3-35. Partially declassified
and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

22 John J. Welch, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Air Force
(Acquisition), and Lt. Gen. John E. Jaquish, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
(Acquisition), Presentation to the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee
on Defense. Subject: Air Force Research, Development, Test and Evaluation,
29 April 1992, p. 4; in US Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations,
Subcommittee on the Department of Defense, Hearings on Department of Defense
Appropriations for FY 1993, Part 6, 102nd Cong., 2nd sess., 1992, p. 318.
In response to congressional questions about why US concern over accidental
or unauthorized launches of nuclear weapons had not prompted the government
to sign an agreement with the Commonwealth of Independent States to take
most or all strategic weapons off alert, the Director of the Strategic Defense
Initiative Organization, Ambassador Henry Cooper, stated: In addition
to ballistic missiles of the former Soviet Union and China, we are concerned
about those that may be acquired by other countries in the future.
Ambassador Henry Cooper, Director, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization,
in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee,
Hearings on Department on Defense Appropriations For Fiscal Year 1993, Part
4, 102nd Cong., 2nd sess., 2 April 1992, p. 346.

23 William M. Arkin, Iran and the Virtual Reality
of US War Games, Middle East Report, November - December 1995, p. 12.

24 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 June 1992  31 December 1992, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1993, p. 80. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom
of Information Act.

States Strategic Command, 1 June 1992  31 December 1992, Top
Secret, [n.d.] 1993, p. 5; US Strategic Command, History of the United
States Strategic Command, 1 January 1993  31 December 1993, Top
Secret, [n.d.] 1994, p. 158. Both documents partially declassified and released
under the Freedom of Information Act.

26 Eric Schmitt, Head of Nuclear Forces Plans for
a New World, The New York Times, 25 January 1993, p. B7.

28 US Strategic Command, Final Report of the SWPS
Modernization Road Map Team (SM-RT)(U), Secret, August 1992, pp. 3-6,
3-49. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information
Act.

31 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1993  31 December 1993, Top Secret,
pp. 178, 180. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of
Information Act.

37 USSTRATCOM, History of the United States Strategic
Command, 1 January 1994-31 December 1994, [n.d.] 1995, p. 64. Top Secret.
Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act,
and later USSTRATCOM, History of the United States Strategic Command,
1 January 1993-31 December 1993, [n.d.] 1994, p. 165. Top Secret. Partially
declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

40 National Academy of Sciences, Committee on International
Security and Arms Control, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997), Chapter 3, Revising
Targeting Policy and War Planning.

42 In an recent interview with The Washington Post,
Gen. Lee Butler acknowledged the criticism that the Living SIOP
made nuclear war more possible. It is absolutely is a fair comment.
And what it reflects, first of all, is, yes, there was an evolution in my
thinking. R. Jeffrey Smith, The Dissenter, The Washington
Post, 7 December 1997, p. W18.

43 Rome Laboratory (US Air Force), Thrust #3: Command
and Control Goals, 30 November 1997. Available on the Rome Lab Web
Site, http://erd.rl.af.mil.

48 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1994  31 December 1994, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1995, p. 42. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom

26

of Information Act.

49 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1994  31 December 1994, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1995, p. 43. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom
of Information Act.

50 US Strategic Command, Sun City, 1993, p.
2. Secret. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information
Act.

51 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1994  31 December 1994, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1995, p. 45. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom
of Information Act.

52 USSTRATCOM/J51 Memorandum, NPR Report #8, Working Group
#5, 4 November 1993, p. 2. For official use only; USSTRATCOM Memorandum,
NPR Report #5, Working Group #2, 16 November 1993, p. 2. Both documents partially
declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

53 USSTRATCOM/J51 Memorandum, NPR Report #69, Working Group
#5, 9 February 1994, p. 1. Secret. Partially declassified and released under
the Freedom of Information Act.

54 Listing, Group 5  Relationship Between US Nuclear
Postures and Counterproliferation Policy, Formal STRATCOM Answers as of 22
November 1993, pp. 12, 13. Secret. Partially declassified and released under
the Freedom of Information Act.

55 Listing, Group 5  Relationship Between US Nuclear
Postures and Counterproliferation Policy, Formal STRATCOM Answers as of 22
November 1993, p. 14. Secret. Partially declassified and released under the
Freedom of Information Act. Emphasis in original.

64 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1993  31 December 1993, Top Secret,
p. 176. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information
Act.

68 US Strategic Command, Counterproliferation and
the Silver Book, Secret, 26 April 1994, pp. 1, 3. Partially Declassified
and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

69 USSTRATCOM, The SILVER BOOK Concept: Providing
Military Options to Counter Proliferation, July 1993, p. 8. Secret.
Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

70 USSTRATCOM, Counterproliferation and the Silver
Book, 10 March 1994, p. 1. Partially declassified and released under
the Freedom of Information Act.

71 US Strategic Command, Minutes of the Fifty-Second
United States Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group Meeting (U), 27-28
October 1994, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 27 January 1995, pp. 10, 17, 18.
Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

72 Presentation, US Strategic Command, Intelligence
Support to the Silver Book Concept, Secret, March 1994, slide 4. Partially
declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

76 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1994  31 December 1994, Top Secret,
[n.d.] 1995, p. 11. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom
of Information Act.

80 US Strategic Command, Nuclear Forces; Post 1994,
12 July 1994, p. 2. Released under the Freedom of Information Act.

81 US Strategic Command, Minutes of the Fifty-Second
United States Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group Meeting (U), 27-28
October 1994, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 27 January 1995, p. 10. Partially
declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

82 US Strategic Command, Minutes of the Fifty-Third United
States Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group Meeting (U), 20-21 April
1995, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, Secret/NOFORN/ND, 21 July 1995, pp. 4,
15. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information
Act.

83 US Strategic Command, Essentials of Post-Cold War
Deterrence, [n.d.] probably April 1995, pp. 3, 4. Partially declassified
and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Fourth United States Strategic Advisory Group Meeting (U), 19-20 October
1995, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, Secret/RD, 19 January 1996, p. 4. Partially
declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

91 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine For Joint Theater
Nuclear Operations, Joint Pub 3-12.1, 9 February 1996. Emphasis added.
The document is available on the JCS internet home page,
http://www.dtic.mil/jcs.

92 USSTRATCOM, Minutes of the Fifty-Third United States
Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group Meeting (U), 20-21 April 1995,
Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 21 July 1995, p. 15. Partially declassified and released
under the Freedom of Information Act.

94 Adm. John T. Mitchell, US Navy, Director, Strategic Systems
Program Office, in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearings
on Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year
1994 and the Future Years Defense Program, Part 7: Nuclear Deterrence, Arms
Control and Defense Intelligence, 103rd Cong., 1st sess., 11 May 1993, p.
17.

96 Adm. John T. Mitchell, US Navy, Director, Strategic Systems
Program Office, in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Hearings
on Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year
1994 and the Future Years Defense Program, Part 7: Nuclear Deterrence, Arms
Control and Defense Intelligence, 103rd Cong., 1st sess., 11 May 1993, p.
17.

97 US Strategic Command, History of the United States
Strategic Command, 1 January 1993  31 December 1993 (U), Top
Secret, [n.d.] 1994, p. 62. Partially declassified and released under the
Freedom of Information Act.

98 Brig. Gen. James Richards, Department of the Air Force,
B53 Replacement on the B-2, Briefing, 29 September 1995, chart
#3. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information
Act. The upgrade of the test plane was announced in a DefenseLink News Release,
US Department of Defense, Air Force to Upgrade B-2 Test Flight
Aircraft, 21 March 1996.

99 Lt. Col. Billy M. Mullins, USAF, SAF/AQQS(N), Talking
Papers on the B61-11 Program Status and History, 11 September 1995,
p. 4. Secret. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of
Information Act.

104 Department of the Air Force, B53 Replacement
Program, briefing by Brig. Gen. James Richards, 28 September 1995,
slides 2 and 3. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of
Information Act.

109 Department of the Air Force, B53 Replacement
Program, briefing by Brig. Gen. James Richards, 28 September 1995,
slide 9. Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information
Act.

110 Department of Energy, Office of Research and Inertial
Fusion, Core R&AT Program Elements (Detail), [n.d.] approximately
1995, p. 3. Previously available on the DOE Internet Home Page. I am indebted
to Andrew M. Lichterman with Western States Legal Foundation for bringing
this document to my attention.

111 Sandia National Laboratory, Statement of C. Paul
Robinson, Highlights of Current Stockpile Support Work, 10 April
1997. Available on the SNL Internet Home Page,
http://www.sandia.gov.

117 US Department of State, Statement by the Honorable
Warren Christopher, Secretary of State, regarding a declaration by the President
on Security Assurances for non-nuclear weapon states parties to the Treaty
on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 5 April 1995.

119 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations, Joint Pub 3-12, 29 April 1993, p. I-1. Released
under the Freedom of Information Act.

120 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations, Joint Pub 3-12, 15 December 1995, p. GL-2. The
document is available on the Joint Chiefs of Staffs internet home page,
http://www.dtic.mil/jcs.

National Press Club Newsmakers Luncheon with General Lee Butler USAF,
(ret.),
Commander-in-Chief, United States Strategic Air Command (1991-92);
Commander-in-Chief,
United States Strategic Command (1992-1994).

Question and Answer Session (transcript), 2 February 1998

DOUG HARBRECHT (Moderator. National Press Club president and Washington news
editor of Business Week): (Brief audio break) - [Do you think the
US should consider using nuclear weapons in] Iraq or in response to any chemical
or biological weapon threat?

GEN. BUTLER: At the risk of reiterating something I just said, I think its
worth reiterating perhaps in a slightly different context. I had the opportunity
to go through this calculus. When I was the director of strategic plans and
policy in the 1989 to 91 time frame, it was my direct responsibility
to draw up the strategic objectives of our prospective war in the Persian
Gulf, to imagine outcomes and to set war termination objectives.

At the very heart of that calculus was to imagine the prospect of using nuclear
weapons. And I would point out to those of you here who might have read Colin
Powells memoirs that he goes through this himself in the latter stages
of his book, because he was asked to imagine the kinds of targets in the
Persian Gulf that might be struck with nuclear weapons. I share his reservations
absolutely.

The first issue, of course, is the one that I posed in my remarks. If we
rightfully abhor and condemn the resort to the use of a weapon of mass
destruction, how is it we could possibly justify  we, the United States,
a democratic society  ourselves stooping to such ends?

Number two, can you imagine the impact in a part of the world where we worked
so assiduously for so many years to build our presence, to build support
and credibility, of being the nation that used a nuclear weapon against Arab
peoples? Only the second time in history that such a device had been used,
and it would be the United States, and it would be in a part of the world
where even today those actions raise powerful suspicions.

Secondly, what would  thirdly, what would have happened to the coalition?
How painstakingly we worked to put together a coalition of some 30 nations
from very disparate points on the ideological and cultural compass in order
to provide the proper underpinnings of the international community for that
war. Can you imagine the impact on that coalition if we, the United States,
had used a nuclear weapon, even in response to the use of a weapon of mass
destruction by the Iraqis? It would have been devastating.

Theres the question of targets. If you were the target planner for
the use of a nuclear weapon in the Persian Gulf, what would be your choice?
Surely it would not be the city of Baghdad. Would you hold hundreds of thousands
of people accountable for the acts of their leader? Would it be an Iraqi
division in the far western reaches of that nation? You might be interested
to know the calculation of how many tactical nuclear weapons it requires
to bring even one division to its knees when its spread over such a
vast expanse.

What would have happened to the fallout from the blast? If you want to do
maximum damage, you use a ... [inaudible]. How is it that the fallout patterns
would have arrayed themselves beyond the borders of Iraq, perhaps even to
the south if the wind had been blowing in that direction?

The real point of the exercise is that the United States has put itself happily
in a position where it has no need to resort to weapons of mass destruction
to respond to such provocation. We brought Iraq to its knees conventionally.
We could have decimated that country. We could have occupied it as we did
Japan and Germany at the end of World War II. We chose not to do that, but
it was within our capacity to do so. And if we could do that in 1991, when
they had the fourth-strongest army in the world and a significant air force,
can you imagine the task

31

today when weve reduced all of that by at least two-thirds? It is wrong
from every aspect. It is wrong politically. It makes no sense militarily.
And morally, in my view, it is indefensible.

...

MR. HARBRECHT: General, its widely believed that Israel not only possesses
nuclear weapons but would use them if its survival depended upon them. Is
Israels reliance on its nuclear weapons in the dangerous Middle East
ill-advised?

GEN. BUTLER: I think that it is a perfect illustration of the short-sightedness
that tends to surround this issue of whether or not nations should acquire
nuclear capability. What was it that prompted Iraq to try and acquire weapons
of mass destruction, a nuclear weapon arsenal of their own? Could it have
in any way been tied to the fact that Israel acquired such capability? And
what of Syria or Iran? What of Libya?

These things have causes and they have effects. Theyre related. The
circumstances in which nuclear weapons capability is created and sustained
arent static. As a consequence, in my view, it is dangerous in the
extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East,
one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons,
perhaps numbering in the hundreds, and that that inspires other nations to
do so. And, of course, thats not the only regional conflict where we
see this perilous confrontation.

I will tell you what I do think. I cannot imagine any regional quarrel or
conflict that is or will be made easier to resolve by the presence or the
further introduction of nuclear weapons.

Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence, US Strategic Command,
1995.
Partially declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 1995, the Strategic Advisory Group at STRATCOM prepared Terms
of Reference as a baseline for expanding nuclear deterrence beyond
Russia and China to take on a broader role including rogue states
armed with weapons of mass destruction. The document, which was released
to the author under the Freedom of Information Act, contains the conclusions
of several years of thinking about the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold
War era. Below are the key conclusions from the document:

Deterring the Undeterrable

For non-Russian states, the penalty for using Weapons of Mass Destruction
(WMD) should not just be military defeat, but the threat of even worse
consequences. Should we ever fail to deter such an aggressor, we must make
good on our deterrence statement in such a convincing way that the message
to others will be so immediately discernible as to bolster deterrence thereafter.

Leaders of rogue states armed with WMD are not undeterrable,
contrary to what many people argue. Soviet leaders, by comparison, were not
rational but deterrence worked against them nonetheless. The
result of deterrence is never predictable and its degree of success will
largely depend on the effort we put into it. This should be our guide to
adapting the deterrence process for future threats. If we put no effort into
deterring rogue states, they will be undeterrable by definition.

It will be necessary to communicate, specifically, what we want to deter
without saying what is permitted. The will to deter against attacks on the
homeland seems to be more credible than deterrence on behalf of others, and
making deterrence value-based can help to be the great equalizer
in blurring the distinction between an adversarys use of a particular
type of WMD. There are levels of damage or destruction that we find unacceptable
whether caused by (or resulting from) nuclear, biological, chemical, or
conventional armaments.

Deterrence should create fear in an opponents mind of extinction 
extinction of either the leaders themselves or their national dependence,
or both. Yet there must always appear to be a door to salvation
open to them should they reverse course. The fear should be compelling, but
not paralyzing. Moreover, the US does not require the ultimate
deterrent  that a nations citizens must pay with their
lives to stop their national leaders from undertaking aggression.

What to Deter With

The United States should have available the full range of responses, conventional
weapons, special operations, and nuclear weapons. Unlike chemical or biological
weapons, the extreme destruction from a nuclear explosion is immediate, with
few if any palliatives to reduce its effect. Although we are not likely to
use nuclear weapons in less than matters of the greatest national importance,
or in less than extreme circumstances, nuclear weapons always cast a shadow
over any crisis or conflict in which the US is engaged. Thus, deterrence
through the threat of use of nuclear weapons will continue to be our top
military strategy.

What to Target

The deterrence plans must be country- and leadership-specific. Targeting
should cover what the opponent values the most. But planners should not be
too rational about determining what that includes. If the adversarys
values are misunderstood through mirror-imaging, deterrence is
almost certain to fail. Targeting will cover the usual categories such as
strategic weaponry (both deployed and in storage or production), other military
capabilities, and war-supporting industry, along with national leadership.

Maintaining Ambiguity

While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damage
that we would find unacceptable, we should not be too specific about

33

our responses. Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what
the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out,
it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed. The
fact that some elements may appear to be potentially out of control
can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the
minds of an adversarys decision makers. This essential sense of fear
is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and
vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national
persona we project to all adversaries.

Creative Deterrence

Beyond tradition targeting of forces and infrastructure it may be necessary
to consider other unique motivators of either a society or its leaders. The
tactic applied by the Soviet Union during the Lebanon crisis is a case in
point: When three of its citizens and their driver were kidnapped and killed,
two days later the Soviets had delivered to the leader of the revolutionary
activity a package containing a single testicle  that of his eldest
son  with a message that said in no uncertain terms, never bother
our people again. It was successful throughout the period of the conflicts
there. Such an insightful tailoring of what is valued within a culture, and
its weaving into a deterrence message, along with a projection of the capability
that be mustered, is the type of creative thinking that must go into deciding
what to hold at risk in framing deterrent targeting for multilateral situations
in the future.

Declaratory Disarmament Policies

Putting forward declaratory policies such as the Negative Security
Assurances under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) creates
serious difficulties for US deterrence policy in the post-Cold War era. It
is a mistake to single out nuclear weapons from the remainder of other WMD
and such piecemeal policies are not in the best interest of US long-term
security.

Likewise, a no first use policy would undermine deterrence in the post-Cold
War era because it would limit US nuclear goals without providing equitable
returns. Adversaries must be warned in the strongest ways possible, whether
our reaction would either be responsive or preemptive.

Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

There are critical differences between the BW/CW conventions and the NPT.
While the former outlaw weapons, the NPT makes a distinction between the
possession of nuclear weapons by the five original nuclear weapons powers
and everyone else. Elimination of nuclear weapons should only be considered
in the context of complete and general disarmament. Since it is impossible
to uninvent nuclear weapons or to prevent clandestine manufacture
of some number of them, nuclear weapons seem destined to be the centerpiece
of US strategic deterrence for the foreseeable future.